Earlier this week, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh granted a preliminary injunction that would allow Apple to bar Samsung from selling its Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the United States while a full trial on Samsung's alleged design infringement is conducted.

Enforcement of the sales ban required that Apple post a $2.6 million bond from which damages to Samsung would be paid if Apple ultimately lost its infringement case, and FOSS Patents reports that Apple has indeed moved quickly to post the bond.

Apple didn't hesitate to post its $2.6 million bond to protect Samsung againt the possibility of a successful appeal, in which case the preliminary injunction would be found to have been improperly granted. [...]

On this basis, the injunction has taken effect and Samsung must abide by it. Otherwise Apple could ask the court to sanction Samsung for contempt.

Samsung has filed a request for a stay of the injunction while it appeals the decision, but for the time being Samsung is subject to the ban.

The ban only applies to the Galaxy Tab 10.1, and Samsung now offers several other tablet models that are not affected by the injunction, so it is unclear exactly how much of an economic effect the ban will have on Samsung. But the injunction does strengthen Apple's standing as it pursues this and other lawsuits against Samsung in courts around the world.

Top Rated Comments

This is stupid! I have an iPad and love it, but fail to see how the Tab is remotely a copy in any way. For one, it's nowhere near as good in my book. What about this thing did they find to be so close to an iPad? It's flat? It's thin? It's a rectangle? All tablets will be. (Except for the "The Pyramid" :p)

I don't get it. I agree, this all should end. Apple looks petty here.

Edit: Does anybody have a link showing the comparison of both units highlighting the parts that Apple claims to be infringing? I'd like to be a bit more educated on the subject.

Good question. I don’t have a link to specific claims which are probably pretty complicated—but definitely NOT just basic things like being thin rectangles.

Samsung truly has copied Apple really blatantly time and time again, undeniably leveraging Apple’s designers to prevent the time/expense/risk of doing their own work from scratch; and whether that’s legally significant or not (seemingly it is, sometimes) there are some links showing that. For starters:

http://photos.appleinsider.com/samsungvsapple.081911.jpg

http://dcurt.is/chromebox-samsung (very recent!)

http://www.idownloadblog.com/2011/09/29/apple-samsung-copycat-2/

Another thing to remember: look at all the other tablets that do NOT use Apple styling. Apple’s way is not the “only way” to design a tablet, or a charger, or a UI, or packaging, etc. etc.

And certainly others besides Samsung have been equally unoriginal. Win or lose, Apple can hardly sit back and make it easy to get away with. That would be a VERY stupid and dangerous precedent for Apple to set.

And most importantly for we users: Wouldn’t we like real choice in the market, and competition rather than lazy trend-riding? Wouldn’t we rather see Samsung be more completely original and innovative? What more-unique tablets have we missed out on because Samsung didn’t put more of their profits into original designs? (Example: would Microsoft’s Surface be as interesting if they’d gone Samsung’s route of “cloning Apple as closely as we can get away with?”)

There is a much bigger idea here than just the Samsung Galaxy Tab, Apple is trying to set a precedent to show to Samsung and other companies that they cant steal Apple's trade dress. Apple has put a ton of R&D into all of their products, and now they should just let someone come along and copy it? I don't think so.

People are saying whats the big deal? The big deal is that for a good portion of people, they don't know the difference. There are people who see that it looks like an ipad so it must be a samsung ipad. Some people just aren't as educated as the people who visit this forum, so those people are easily deceived by Samsung's obvious ripoff.

To put it in other terms, what if Hyundai (another Korean company) decided they were going to build a 90% ripoff of the Corvette. While we can all agree that for the most part all cars have 4 wheels, a windshield, door handles an engine etc, we can see that the designs that people can come up with for cars are endless, and therefore Chevrolet would have a valid lawsuit on their hands and Hyundai would probably loose and most people would think Chevy had the right to defend their brand and looks of their car. So then why do people love to hate on Apple when they set out to do just the same, defend what they spent their time, money and effort on.

It just doesn't make sense. Apple should defend what is theirs without people hating on them.

Good question. I don’t have a link to specific claims which are probably pretty complicated—but definitely NOT just basic things like being thin rectangles.

For this injunction, the only thing being considered is the Apple Design Patent (http://www.google.com/patents/USD504889). See below. (It's very much like the German injunction last year over that EU design registration.)

Interestingly, before the iPad came out in 2010, that same frontal design had been used in several products, including a 2008 Canadian designed Windows slate which looked similar even down to the slimness:

Company B (Samsung) then comes along and rather then licensing the technologies from company A or developing their own copy them instead.

Exactly, but I might add that what people fail to understand is that nothing force a company to licence its patented tech.
It's up to a company to decide whether they want to gain cash through licensing or want to keep the patented inventions for themselves to keep an innovating edge.
Apple has made the business decision to keep its patented inventions, that are not part of a standard, to themselves.
It's funny how many people fail to see that Apple's iPhone & iPad were the results of many years of massive R&D investments from a company that barely had the means (10 years after almost being bankrupt). But now that Apple is on top of a mountain of cash people think it's okay to abuse its rights?

Sometimes I feel people are just jealous of the way things unfolded... In retrospect the decision Apple took made perfect sense (while being ridiculed and critiqued every time) and people are just angry with their own lack of vision. Apple went from a nobody in the phone market to the n°1 profit earner of the mobile industry (while still selling only a fraction of the market's devices), companies that were leaders now are struggling (Nokia), and Samsung benefited from strait up copying Apple's designs to become the second player of the market (profits).

On the other side Samsung decided to license some of its telecommunication patents and, in order for them to become a telecommunication standard, promised to treat all people licensing them equally. And Apple doesn't feel that it has been treated equally.

The consumer (who's point I was putting across) doesn't give a rats ass what the lawsuit is about. All the consumer knows is that its yet another 'Apple gets Samsung product banned' lawsuit.

Its old, its pathetic. Whats even more stupid is that this is an old model and its been changed in later models to avoid such infringement.

The point here is that Apple is using a bunch of VERY ambiguous patents to stop competition. This hurts the consumer.

The consumer does care because if people who revolutionize technology can't reap the rewards for their ingenuity it becomes a disincentive to invent and create. That creates a world of inferior products because anyone who does anything remarkable will just be robbed.

Allowing thieves like Samsung to continue only hurt the consumer in the end.

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Agree

Never thought I'd admit this after a decade of using Apple systems, but I'm not proud of their recent years with regards to these suits. Whether they have merit or not, Apple has a ton of cash they're sitting on, and it seems they're more interested in using it for these types of monopolistic maneuvers and strong arming.

Yeah they should not pick on little mom and pops like Samsung. If they don't defend their designs they might as well close up shop.

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